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A/N: the following verses are translated from the Almira Codex
I
The Great Wall rose around us
year after year as we toiled at its construction.
In time our sons and their sons, too,
gave their sweat and bodies to its building;
‘till at last, The Great Wall, and its protection,
did entirely surround us.
II
Within the wall we lived our lives and flourished;
yet none could say what set us building it.
We were safe within the wall’s embrace;
and our enemies, though we could no longer name them,
were kept at bay without.
Our grandchildren and their children’s children
lived their lives in peace.
III
From time to time strangers arrived outside the wall.
Some followed the wall east, and some west,
always returning to the place where they’d begun.
And finding no gate or other entry way,
they concluded that the wall must be a quarantine,
and they did not choose to linger.
IV
We became aware of wars beyond our wall.
The rumble of their guns and acrid smoke drifted
across the parapets, exciting younger boys
and frightening their mothers.
At such times we blessed the builders of our wall,
and paid no heed to those diplomacies
pursued by violent means.
V
A philosophical debate arose within the wall.
Some asked if walls that locked all others out, also locked us in?
But who can say the sun revolves around our Earth, or Earth around the sun?
For millennia the evidence was equal on both sides,
and could not be decided by philosophy alone.
And so, no one knew the true nature of the wall –
but all knew its protection.
____________________________________________________________________
Today the great wall lies in ruin,
and stones that once turned hordes away, now draw tourists there.
There are no clues or evidence explaining its destruction,
or what became of the civilization that flourished within it.
All that we can say for sure is that a thousand years after it was built,
those who lived within the wall, also tore it down.
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